Cell

if it's getting worse . . . don't you see? The newest phoners would be the first ones to get messed up!'

'It's like in War of the Worlds,' Tom said dreamily.

'Huh?' Denise said. 'I didn't see that movie. It looked too scary.'

'The invaders were killed by microbes our bodies tolerate easily,' Tom said. 'Wouldn't it be poetic justice if the phone-crazies all died of a computer-virus?'

'I'd settle for aggression,' Dan said. 'Let them kill each other in one big battle royal.'

Clay was still thinking about Johnny. Sharon too, but mostly Johnny. Johnny who'd written PLEASE COME GET ME in those big capital letters and then signed all three names, as if that would somehow add weight to his plea.

Ray Huizenga said, 'Isn't going to do us any good unless it happens tonight.' He stood up and stretched. 'They'll be pushin us on pretty quick. I'm gonna pause to do me a little necessary while I've got the time. Don't go without me.'

'Not in the bus, we won't,' Tom said as Ray started up the hiking trail. 'You've got the keys in your pocket.'

'Hope everything comes out all right, Ray,' Denise said sweetly.

'Nobody loves a smartass, darlin,' Ray said, and disappeared from view.

'What are they going to do to us?' Clay asked. 'Any ideas about that?'

Jordan shrugged. 'It may be like a closed-circuit TV hookup, only with a lot of different areas of the country participating. Maybe even the whole world. The size of the stadium makes me think that—'

'And the Latin, of course,' Dan said. 'It's a kind of lingua franca.'

'Why do they need one?' Clay asked. 'They're telepaths.'

'But they still think mostly in words,' Tom said. 'At least so far. In any case, they do mean to execute us, Clay—Jordan thinks so, Dan does, and so do I.'

'So do I,' Denise said in a small, morose voice, and caressed the curve of her belly.

Tom said, 'Latin is more than a lingua franca. It's the language of justice, and we've seen it used by them before.'

Gunner and Harold. Yes. Clay nodded.

'Jordan has another idea,' Tom said. 'I think you need to hear it, Clay. Just in case. Jordan?'

Jordan shook his head. 'I can't.'

Tom and Dan Hartwick looked at each other.

'Well, one of you tell me,' Clay said. 'I mean, Jesus!'

So it was Jordan after all. 'Because they're telepaths, they know who our loved ones are,' he said.

Clay searched for some sinister meaning in this and didn't find it. 'So?'

'I have a brother in Providence,' Tom said. 'If he's one of them, he'll be my executioner. If Jordan's right, that is.'

'My sister,' Dan Hartwick said.

'My floor-proctor,' Jordan said. He was very pale. 'The one with the megapixel Nokia phone that shows video downloads.'

'My husband,' Denise said, and burst into tears. 'Unless he's dead. I pray God he's dead.'

For a moment Clay still didn't get it. And then he thought: John? My Johnny? He saw the Raggedy Man holding a hand over his head, heard the Raggedy Man pronouncing sentence: 'Ecce homo —insanus.' And saw his son walking toward him, wearing his Little League cap turned around backwards and his favorite Red Sox shirt, the one with Tim Wakefield's name and number on it. Johnny, small beneath the eyes of the millions watching via the miracle of closed-circuit, flock-boosted telepathy.

Little Johnny-Gee, smiling. Empty-handed.

Armed with nothing but the teeth in his head.

3

It was ray who broke the silence, although ray wasn't even there.

'Ah, Jesus.' Coming from a little distance up the hiking trail. 'Fuck.' Then: 'Yo, Clay!'

'What's up?' Clay called back.

'You've lived up here all your life, right?' Ray didn't sound like a happy camper. Clay looked at the others, who returned only blank stares. Jordan shrugged and flipped his palms outward, for one heartbreaking moment becoming a near-teenager instead of just another refugee from the Phone War.

'Well. . . downstate, but yeah.' Clay stood up. 'What's the problem?'

'So you know what poison ivy and poison oak looks like, right?'

Denise started to break up and clapped both hands over her mouth.

'Yeah,' Clay said. He couldn't help smiling himself, but he knew what it looked like for sure, had warned Johnny and his backyard buddies off enough of it in his time.

'Well get up here and take a look,' Ray said, 'and come on your own.' Then, with hardly a pause: 'Denise, I don't need telepathy to know you're laughin. Put a sock in it, girl.'

Clay left the picnic area, walking past the sign reading IF YOU GO TAKE A MAP!and then beside the pretty little brook. Everything in the woods was pretty now, a spectrum of furnace colors mixed with the sturdy, never-changing green of the firs, and he supposed (not for the first time, either) that if men and women owed God a death, there were worse seasons of the year in which to pay up.

He had expected to come upon Ray with his pants loosened or actually around his ankles, but Ray was standing on a carpet of pine needles and his pants were buckled. There were no bushes at all where he was, not poison ivy or anything else. He was as pale as Alice had been when she plunged into the Nickersons' living room to vomit, his skin so white it looked dead. Only his eyes still had life. They burned in his face.

'C'mere,' he said in a prison-yard whisper. Clay could hardly hear him over the noisy chuckle of the brook. 'Quick. We don't have much time.'

'Ray, what the hell—'

'Just listen. Dan and your pal Tom, they're too smart. Jordy too. Sometimes thinking gets in the way. Denise is better, but she's pregnant. Can't trust a pregnant woman. So you're it, Mr. Artist. I don't like it because you're still holding on to your kid, but your kid's over. In your heart you know it. Your kid is toast.'

'Everything all right back there, you guys?' Denise called, and numb as he was, Clay could hear the smile in her voice.

'Ray, I don't know what—'

'No, and that's how it's gonna stay. Just listen. What that fuck in the red hoodie wants isn't gonna happen, if you don't let it. That's all you need to know.'

Ray reached into the pocket of his chinos and brought out a cell phone and a scrap of paper. The phone was gray with grime, as if it had spent most of its life in a working environment.

'Put it in your pocket. When the time comes, call the number on that slip. You'll know the time. I gotta hope you'll know.'

Clay took the phone. It was either take it or drop it. The little slip of paper escaped his fingers.

'Get that!' Ray whispered fiercely.

Clay bent and picked up the scrap of paper. Ten digits were scrawled on it. The first three were the Maine area code. 'Ray, they read minds! If I have this—'

Ray's mouth stretched in a terrible parody of a grin. 'Yeah!' he whispered. 'They peek in your head and find out you're thinkin about a fuckin cell phone! What else is anyone thinkin about since October first? Those of us who can still fuckin think, that is?'

Clay looked at the dirty, battered cell phone. There were two DYMO-tape strips on the casing. The top one read MR. FOGARTY.the bottom one read PROP. GURLEYVILLE QUARRY DO NOT REMOVE.